It also sees North Korea as a valuable counterweight to US power in the region.
Advertisement
The U.S. military removed its nuclear bombs from the country in 1991.
“North Korea’s nuclear test is a unsafe escalation and poses an unacceptable threat”, Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, U.S. Forces Korea commander, said in a statement Tuesday. The aircraft flew past the U.S. air base in Pyeongtaek accompanied by four South Korean F-15Ks and four US F-16s.
Two U.S. bombers stationed in Guam flew to South Korea and conducted drills with Japanese defense aircraft on Tuesday as Washington struggles to find an effective way to contain the North Korean threat.
North Korea’s military was prepared to stop any U.S. moves, it said, with a closing warning to Washington.
But with a fifth nuclear test launched by the North heightening tensions on the peninsula once more, the possibility couldn’t seem further away.
“The U.S. and its followers are making much fuss, creating impression that a nuclear bomb was dropped in downtown Washington or Seoul”, the Korean Central News Agency reported.
“China has been very clear that it understands the need for a new UN Security Council resolution in response to the latest North Korean nuclear test”, Kim said.
People look through binoculars towards North Korea from the destroyed bridge across Yalu River that once linked North Korea’s Sinuiju and Dandong, China’s Liaoning province, September 10, 2016.
On Friday, Pyongyang set off its most powerful nuclear blast to date, saying it had mastered the ability to mount a warhead on a ballistic missile, ratcheting up a threat that its rivals and the United Nations have been powerless to contain.
Do you think the US show of force with fighter jets after North Korea’s fifth nuclear test could escalate into a third world war?
“Certainly North Korea would take precautions against a decapitation strike and it is unlikely that South Korea and the United States could know exactly where the top leadership is located in a crisis”, Boydston stated in The Japan Times.
North Korea’s claim to have used “standardized” warheads in the detonation makes some outsiders worry that it is making headway in its push to develop small, sophisticated warheads that can be mounted on missiles that can reach the USA mainland.
“I want our government and military to stay fully ready to retaliate, determined to end North Korea’s regime once North Korea fires even one missile nuclear-armed missile toward our territory”.
Siegfried S. Hecker, a nuclear weapons expert at Stanford University who has visited North Korea’s nuclear facilities as recently as 2010, states on 38 North, a Johns Hopkins University website dedicated to North Korea, that Pyongyang could add 330 pounds of highly enriched uranium to an existing stockpile of about 660 to 880 pounds.
Advertisement
No photos of the floods were released, but ones like this, of North Korean soldiers cooking out on an island in the Yalu River on Sunday, contrast markedly from the bounty depicted in the photos of Kim.
